Globalization, Health Crises and Health Care

Abstract

The definition of the term “globalization” is itself contested terrain. This article recognizes the plurality of legitimate definitions that have in common a focus on economic, political, and social processes that operate across national borders. The recent multiplication of such processes is not in dispute. Neither is the “globalization” of health concerns as diverse as the transmission of communicable disease—the longest-standing concern—and the supply of health professionals as they migrate across national borders. The 2008 financial crisis has added to the list. It also reminds us that health is influenced by factors many of which lie entirely outside the domain of the health care system—hardly a new observation, but one that bears repeating. The study of globalization and health is unavoidably transdisciplinary, as reflected in the range of disciplines from which the sources in this bibliography are drawn. If there is a single guiding principle behind their selection, beyond emphasizing a diversity of disciplinary and methodological orientations, it is the contribution that each cited reference can make to understanding that global health issues must be analyzed with reference to distributions of power, and resources that affect opportunities to live a healthy life, and that those distributions are closely connected to global economic and geopolitical processes.